The Honeymoon Prize. Jessica Hart
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fool me.’ Pel was enjoying himself hugely. He loved gossip, especially if he was the only one in the know. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’
‘No! Yes! Oh, I don’t know,’ she admitted on a sigh. ‘It was like we were two entirely different people in a completely different world.’
‘Sounds like the ultimate fantasy,’ commented Pel.
‘Well, it’s not mine, and I’m quite sure it wasn’t Max’s,’ said Freya tartly. ‘As far as I’m concerned it was just an embarrassing incident, which I’d really rather forget. It’s six years ago now, and Max and I have hardly exchanged a word since. When I saw him at Lucy’s wedding last year, he behaved as if he hadn’t seen me since Lucy and I were doing our A-levels.’
She couldn’t quite keep an edge of chagrin from her voice. It might be a huge relief to think that Max had no memory of that embarrassing night, but no girl wanted to know that she could be quite so comprehensively forgotten, especially when she herself had had so much trouble putting the whole incident from her mind.
‘He’d obviously forgotten the whole business,’ she said.
‘You haven’t,’ Pel pointed out.
‘Only because I’m living in his apartment with all his things. I hadn’t thought of him for years before Lucy suggested that I move in there,’ she added, not entirely truthfully.
‘It must be a bit awkward, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is, but I was desperate for somewhere to live where I wouldn’t haemorrhage money on rent, and it wasn’t as if I had to actually see Max or anything. He flew out the week before I moved in and left the keys with Lucy. And she was so thrilled with her idea that I couldn’t tell her why I didn’t feel comfortable taking such a huge favour from Max.’
Pel sat up, suddenly alert. ‘You mean Lucy doesn’t know that you and Max…?’
‘I couldn’t tell her,’ Freya admitted, running her finger around the rim of her glass. ‘It was too difficult. She was my best friend.’
‘I thought I was your best friend!’ said Pel, ruffling up immediately.
‘Yes, yes, you are,’ she soothed him, ‘but in a different way. Besides, I didn’t know you then. And Max is Lucy’s brother. She’s always grumbling about him, but I know that deep down she adores him, and she’d hate to think that there might be a problem between us.
‘It was my fault, too, and you know what it’s like if you don’t confess immediately. The longer I didn’t say anything, the harder it got to bring the subject up, and in the end it just seemed easier to keep quiet.
‘You’re the only person I’ve ever told,’ Freya went on, fixing Pel with a steely look, ‘and if you mention it to anyone—even Marco—I will take you back to the gym and attach a certain part of your anatomy to the heaviest weights I can find so that you spend the rest of your life talking in a very, very high voice. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Perfectly,’ he pretended to squeak. ‘Your secret is safe with me!’
‘It had better be! Now, can we please drop the subject and go back to my party? Max is just a blip in my past. I’m much more interested in the divine Dan Freer and how he’s going to change my life, so let’s get another drink and draw up a guest list.’
CHAPTER TWO
DECIDING to seduce Dan Freer was all very well in theory, Freya reflected as she sipped a cocktail and tried to look as if she was enjoying her own party, but in practice it didn’t seem quite so easy as she had blithely claimed to Pel.
She had done what she could. Her hair had been cut and coloured, transforming her into a blonde whose reflection made her start every time she looked in a mirror. Egged on by Lucy, she had bought a daring new dress and a fabulous pair of shoes. She looked as good as she was ever going to, Freya decided.
She had thrown her efforts into organising the party, which was well into its swing, judging by the hubbub and the number of empty bottles congregating in the kitchen, and she hadn’t given enough thought to what she was actually going to do once Dan actually appeared.
Freya’s planning had always got a bit vague at that point. Somehow the two of them would gravitate together, and when the other guests started drifting politely away at eight, as Pel had said they would, Dan would insist on taking her out to dinner at some intimate little restaurant where they could be alone, and after that…well, that would be up to him. That was as much as Freya had decided. She couldn’t be expected to organise everything herself.
Not that there was much sign of Dan gravitating towards her so far. She hadn’t counted on the way he had been instantly annexed by a bevy of the prettiest girls from office, who had him corralled against the back of a sofa and were busy running fingers through their hair and laughing like hyenas whenever Dan opened his mouth.
She should have been able to count on losing her nerve, though, thought Freya, resigned.
She took another slug of her martini and glanced at Lucy, who was standing beside her. ‘What do you think?’
Lucy didn’t pretend to misunderstand the question. ‘He’s perfect,’ she said.
Together, they gazed across the room at Dan. Unlike the rest of the men, he had ignored the black tie specified on Freya’s careful invitations, and had come in his trademark battered leather jacket, but instead of looking underdressed he was easily the coolest guy at the party, surrounded by his coterie of blondes. The famous smile gleamed, showing perfect white teeth. He exuded a kind of dissolute charm that raised him above mere good looks. He was dark and debonair and deliciously handsome, but there was something faintly, irresistibly, dangerous about him, too.
‘He’s exactly what you need,’ Lucy told her. ‘Your very own sex god.’
‘He is quite attractive, isn’t he?’
‘And the award for understatement of the year goes to…Freya King! God, Freya, where’s your sense of proportion? That man is “quite attractive” in the way the Pope is quite Catholic! If you’d said he was drop-dead gorgeous I would have thought you were being restrained.’
Lucy fished the olive out of her martini and waved it at her friend. ‘I’ve got to hand it to you,’ she said. ‘You may be incredibly picky, but you’ve got taste!’
‘I’m glad you approve,’ said Freya humbly.
‘I certainly do. Dan is to die for! If I wasn’t married to Steve, I’d be elbowing you out of the way—which, by the way, is what you should be doing to those girls,’ she added pointedly. ‘What are you doing standing here with us? You go get him, girl!’
‘Do you really think I can?’ Freya looked doubtfully back at Dan. He really was extraordinarily good-looking. Why should a man like him notice her? He probably spent his whole life batting away gorgeous women who threw themselves at his feet. She would only get squashed in the pile.
‘Of course you can!’ Lucy was taking no nonsense. ‘Look at you! You look fantastic! That dress is fabulous, and if those high heels don’t turn him on, he’s not the red-blooded male I take him for. By the time you’ve dazzled him with your sparkling wit and personality, I guarantee you’ll have him on his knees!’
She gave Freya a little push. ‘Off you go!’
Freya dug in her heels like a child. ‘I’ll…er…I’ll just fix my lipstick first,’ she muttered, reluctant to admit to Lucy how nervous she felt after all her boasts about how determined she was to change her life.
‘I wouldn’t bother if I were you. Dan will only want to kiss it all off,’ said Lucy, but Freya was already escaping to the bathroom.
It was all right for Lucy and Pel. They had a confidence that Freya had never acquired. They knew